Curt Smith: Romney can say I told you so’

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By Curt Smith

MPNnow

By Curt Smith

Posted Jul. 19, 2014 at 6:23 PM

By Curt Smith
Posted Jul. 19, 2014 at 6:23 PM

Canandaigua, N.Y.

Since this space last critiqued America’s 44th president, Barack Obama has completed his March Madness basketball bracket, played golf and pool, been offered pot in Colorado, mocked “photo-ops” while holding them and addressed fundraisers in Texas while refusing to visit the U.S.-Mexican border.

From the start, Obama has forged a New Age persona at once cool, hip and frontally narcissistic. Yet increasingly, he has earned contempt in this country’s most old-fashioned way — on merit. His you can’t believe it even when you see it presidency is a wreck.

In a new Quinnipiac University national poll, America deems Obama the worst president of the last 70 years, dating to the end of World War II. He gets 33 percent, George W. Bush, 28, others far behind. Observing the incumbent, it is easy to see why. Examples:

- Obama signs a 2012 proviso encouraging children from Central and South American countries to come here and become illegal immigrants. Today they mass on the border or trek secretly into our interior. Yet Obama ignores the problem as he does other crises unattended to: a non-recovery recovery, a larger illegal alien invasion, and business’s lack of confidence in his policies – and him.

- In foreign policy, Obama incredibly trades five Al-Qaeda terrorists for an American POW deserter. Thinking him a dupe, Vladimir Putin feels free to invade Ukraine. Obama slashes the U.S. Army’s size to a post-World War II low 450,000. He derides a full probe of Benghazi: our embassy burned; the first U.S. ambassador killed in 30 years. He praises “a stable, democratic, united Iraq,” then snatches defeat from victory by removing America’s military reserve.

Obama pledges “if you like your doctor” and/or “your health” care you can keep them – vows he knew were lies. A president who vowed “the most open and transparent” administration does nothing to make the IRS and VA honest and accountable. Spurning negotiation, he ridicules Republicans like a swellhead teenager running for office: “So sue me.” The GOP is “trying to keep me from doing my job.” Do his job!? On what planet does he live?

If Obama could run again, he would likely be humiliated. Since he can’t, Hillary Clinton will probably be the Democratic nominee, pretending that she barely served the “worst-ever” Prez. A Clinton presidency is possible. To beat her, Republicans will need un homme serieux – gravitas, heft – not seen in most might-be GOP candidates. It is seen in a person who after losing to Obama in 2012 said no mas.

Having also lost in 2008, Mitt Romney said he would never again be a candidate. He still insists so. Wife Ann is said to be reconsidering, given the first 2016 returns. The Quinnipiac Poll says that by 45-38 percent, voters say that it would “have been a much better choice” had Romney been elected in 2012. Another poll of the key New Hampshire primary electorate shows him with 39 percent v. scattered also-rans, each in single digits.

Page 2 of 2 - Romney is busy today giving thoughtful non-political speeches. Their nub: If Franklin Roosevelt termed himself Dr. New Deal, then Dr. Win the War, Dr. Romney is calling America to Come Home. Come home to sane tax and spend, as he vowed in 2012, and from corruption, as he warned against when few were listening. Come home from a foreign policy in shambles, as he predicted, and to a more confident America in the interior of its heart.

Especially after his dazzling first 2012 debate, Romney seemed to mesh with Main Street’s middle-brow and –class. It is true that Obama was narrowly re-elected. It is also true that to their credit, millions of Democrats are finally doing what this space and millions of Republicans did when Bush 43 was President – say, like John F. Kennedy, that “Sometimes party loyalty demands too much.”

Will Romney run? He may choose not to. However, he is perfectly positioned to. If there’s anyone entitled to say, “I told you so,” it’s him.